Hard Stuff: Origin EON15-S review

You know those folks that dress for utility instead of style? The ones that wear flak jackets and ammo belts to dinner parties? The Origin EON15-S is their laptop equivalent. Its lid is painted a flat grey, its power brick is the size of a Volvo and the thing arrives on your doorstep in a gigantic wooden crate that you need a screwdriver to open (seriously). But behind this raw appearance is some hardware that's ready for any game out there. The EON15-S' meaty GTX 485M videocard spit out 43fps in STALKER: Call of Pripyat (at its native resolution of 1920x1080), and 83fps at the same resolution in DiRT 2—all on high settings with 4x antialiasing/4x anisotropic filtering.

Performance like this is rare for a sub-$3,000 laptop, especially one that's so tiny and thin. The 15.6” screen makes games look vibrant with no detectable blurring. HD movies (though there's no Blu-ray drive) also play with exceptional detail—enough to spot the Kevlar weaves in Batman's suit. The chiclet keyboard is a joy to dance your fingers on, but sadly, the trackpad is covered in a rubberized coating that creates a bit too much friction for comfort. The EON15-S's battery life is decent, but you'll want to plug it in for anything other than web-browsing or writing—don't expect it to last for more than an hour and a half while playing games or watching videos. The base model comes with a one-year warranty, plus lifetime free tech support and labor—not too shabby. It won't win any beauty pageants, but for $2,580, this is one badass laptop.